What you will learn from this article:
- Car accident injuries can vary from minor cuts and scrapes to life-threatening or even fatal injuries.
- The most important thing you should do after suffering a car accident injury is to seek medical attention.
- If your injury occurred due to someone else’s negligence, you may be eligible for compensation to cover your expenses and pain and suffering.
With vehicles traveling at high speeds and weighing more than 3,000 pounds, there’s a good chance of injuries if two or more collide. In minor accidents, everyone walks away with minor scrapes and cuts. However, many other injuries can occur, ranging from mild to severe, in a car accident.
If you’ve been involved in a car accident, take care of your injuries first. Then, call the Kentucky Auto Accident Attorneys at McCoy & Sparks to determine your next steps.
Let’s look at the most common car accident injuries and how they happen.
Scrapes and Cuts
Don’t discount scrapes and cuts from car accident injuries. Broken glass shards, debris from the car, and deployed airbags can all lead to injuries in a car accident. There is even a high probability that certain cuts need stitches, depending on the severity of the laceration.
Soft Tissue Injuries
Another one of the most common car accident injuries are soft tissue injuries. Both rear-end and head-on collisions can result in soft tissue injuries. These injuries include any damage to the body’s connective tissue, such as muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Common types of soft tissue injuries include bruises, whiplash, or strains.
Contusions, or bruises, are a collection of broken blood vessels underneath the skin, often caused by bumping into objects, such as the steering wheel. Bruising can occur anywhere on the body, and you may not notice anything until a few days after the accident.
Whiplash occurs when the head and neck are suddenly and violently jerked back and forth. This type of injury is more common in rear-end collisions. You may not experience symptoms such as neck pain, headaches, stiffness, and dizziness until days after the crash.
If you are experiencing pain, swelling, or limited mobility, you could have stretched or torn a muscle or tendon. This is another common soft tissue injury that can occur in a car accident.
Head Injuries
The brain is a delicate organ that can easily be damaged as a result of a car accident injury. In many cases, the sheer force of the brain hitting your skull is the cause of this common injury. The severity of brain damage can range from mild, like bruising or concussions, to something much more severe, like Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI).
TBI is one of the more serious injuries caused by car trauma accidents, even though the symptoms can be subtle. Sometimes, individuals don’t know they have this injury for months, or even years, after the accident. Traumatic Brain Injuries often require specialized hospital care and months of rehabilitation and physical therapy.
Head injuries can cause a broad range of medical issues, such as memory loss, headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, or disorientation.
Neck and Back Injuries
A range of injuries can happen to your neck and back in a vehicle accident. Once again, some of the symptoms might show themselves immediately, while sometimes it could take weeks or months before you realize you have a neck or back injury.
Here are some of the most common types of neck injuries from a car accident:
- Cervical Spondylolisthesis
- Slipped or herniated disc
- Sprain or strain
- Pinched nerve
- Stiff muscles and tendons
- Fracture or compression
- Muscle spasm
The more severe neck and back injuries happen to the spinal cord. Spinal cord trauma occurs when there is a powerful blow or impact on the spinal cord. These types of injuries can lead to numerous debilitating medical conditions, including:
- Paralysis
- Speech problems
- Weakness in arms & legs
- Difficulty breathing
- Sexual dysfunction
- Numbness/tingling in extremities
- Mobility problems
Chest Injuries
Depending on the intensity of the car accident, there are a variety of injuries that can occur to the chest, ranging from mild to severe. Mild symptoms include bruising from a seat belt, steering wheel, or airbag. More severe driving injuries include broken ribs, damage to internal organs, or a heart attack. Depending on what collides with your chest, you could even suffer from a collapsed lung.
Have You Suffered From Car Accident Injuries? We Can Help.
The emotional and physical trauma of a car accident can be monumental. You need to gather information from witnesses, get a copy of the police report, contact your insurance carrier, and dodge calls from the other insurance company – all while trying to heal and find your new normal.
Rest assured, the skilled car accident attorneys at McCoy & Sparks can help you weed through the details while you recover. With decades of experience, the motor vehicle accident lawyers know how to build a case on your behalf. We have many satisfied clients who can confirm our process and knowledge worked for them.
Contact McCoy & Sparks today for your free consultation and get started on the road to recovery.